Friendship Island

The world is a crazy place and we can't make it through without our best girls in our corner. This week we're digging into friendships - how we've made friends in new cities, queer friendships, and more! 

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Let's Dig In: @letsdigin.podcast
Matt Benfield: @mr.benfield
Omar Ahmed: @omarahmed.co

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What's the kind of ship that can never sink? What's the kind of ship that can never sink? You're looking at me like I just told you something so asked you something so crazy. I've never um, what's a ship? Is it a joke? What's the kind of ship that can never sink a friendship? Ship A friendship. Oh, are you dumb? Maybe a little bit. Are you dumb? A friendship. A friendship. Did you look that up? No, I think it's, did you look up dad puns, sponge Bob or something? I've never heard that. Oh my God. Hello. You've never heard that? I can hear that in his voice. A friendship. A friendship. Okay. Hi everyone. Yeah. Welcome back to another episode of Let's Dig In where we're digging into. Obviously shit. Oh yeah. The friendship episode. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure. It was a friendship episode. Friendship. There was a rainbow. The big rainbow. The big rainbow. That said friendship right There Was FIR. No, that's campfire song. Oh, C-A-M-P-F-I-R-S-O-N-G Song. Fuck. Enough. I enough. Enough. I take full responsibility for setting off this episode in a SpongeBob manner. SpongeBob manner. You did this to yourself. Okay. We're gonna talk about friends today. Friendship. Friendship. Girls, we are your friendship girls. We are how we made friends. Who are our friends? Who are our friends? Not who are our friends. Imagine if you're our friend listening. Turn away right now. This isn't for you. This is for strangers. This is about you. We're talking shit. So I mean, I might talk a little shit. Fuck off. I think it's so important. So one of the things I wanted to really talk about, I think it's so important like, friends are so important. No. One of the things I want, when we were like setting up this podcast, we were like thinking of like topic ideas and just like how to, how we, what we'd wanna talk about. One of the key themes or like messages in my life as of late has been building community friendships. How do you make friends in a new city? And we move around a lot. Mm-hmm. We have, we've moved around a lot. So how are we finding people that are like-minded? And how are we engaging in community building because it's a lonely time in the world. Oh my God. A, the world is crazy, as in the world is having a lonely time. Well, A is A, the world is crazy. B, it's hard to make friends. C, everyone's on their fucking phones. No one's going outside anymore. I sound like a boomer. D people aren't going out. You sound like a no. T like Gen Z isn't going out. They sa They're staying inside fucking, they're staying inside and cleaning. I saw a TikTok. A girl was like, why isn't everyone, no one going out anymore? Everyone's just like staying inside and cleaning their apartments on the weekends, like how we meet people. Fun. I know. That's I love that. 'cause I'm 30. But like this is them talking about like 23 year olds. No, I was out every day. I know you were out. friendship, who is your first friend? Who is your first friend? The first friend I can ever, like I can remember in my life is someone from my, I'm gonna say nursery. Like preschool. That's nice. You remember that far? I remember only because of photos I've scenes. So it like jogs memory. Oh yes. When I was like, I don't know, maybe three or four, five. Wow. I dunno how old you are then. But he used to wear a Casper. Tisha, he has, there's five photos of him in my, like the Ghost album, the Ghost Casper, the Friendly Ghost, yeah. I just call him Casper. Oh, that's nice. Maybe he was a dead child. Maybe he was just the ghost of a dead child. That would make sense for you in your journey? That really would make sense for me. Yeah. For you to be my life friends with a ghost in the beginning outta my life trajectory. Yes. My first friend was a ghost. Yeah. This would make sense. And now here I am. Okay. Anything else about Casper that you remember? Are you real? Probably not honestly at this point. I know. I think he was just my first little white friend and then Oh, of course he was white Casper the ghost. Yeah. And I dunno if I had many other friends that were little white boys growing up. Okay. I dunno. That's fine. Did I'm just trying to think now. 'cause all my friends were girls then. Oh yeah. All of my friends were girls in school. See, I didn't really have that many girlfriend. Girl, girlfriend 'cause you had girlfriends 'cause you was too busy getting girlfriends. I had girlfriends, but I didn't have girlfriend. I did have girlfriends starting in like middle school. I think I fear, I think in the elementary school you say I fear. I fear. I think in the elementary school times I had boys as friends, boys who were never friends, boys were never friends. No, they were boys were never my friends. They were kind of friends. No, even like my cousins, like I feel like, I'd say that my cousins were my first like friends growing up. If I'd had to pinpoint a time where I like was friends with peers, my cousins. But they were girlfriends, they were my girl cousins. I wish I had cousin friends. I didn't have cousin friends. Which is crazy because you live in a family with I have a billion people in my family. Yeah, exactly. So like, but like none of them like a couple of them were in my age. Are any of them gay? Do you know if any of your cousins are gay? Is there anyone else in your family that's gay? I don't know. Recently, probably. There have been some that came out, but the ones that I look, the only time I saw my cousins was during Thanksgiving when like 70 of my family came together during Thanks Thanksgiving. And there would be like two girls that I would hang out with. We weren't like friends. Like we never hung out outside Thanksgiving. It was like a once a year thing where I saw 'em and they were cool. Okay. we sat down, had Thanksgiving dinner. I would sit down with them. We would play like pool. We would go out in the, to the bar and No, this tells me a lot about you. No, this tells me a lot about you. I, because I feel like when I talk, when I think about like friendship Yeah. And like the meaningful ones in my life, they started in like high school. I had like meaningful friendships in high school. That got me through high school, got me through coming out, got me through everything you've heard about in the last like few episodes. Yeah. Got me through everything and I'm like, I boil my success in adolescence to the girlfriends around me. Friendship, community building, dad, girlfriends. In high school they were all in chorus, like it was all my choir and theater friends. The eye roll that you can't hear through the podcast just occurred on Omar's face. They got me through all of the traumas of high school, all the singing. Oh no, that wasn't the traumatic part car. All the Greek club drama. No, the gay shit. The gay shit, yeah. They helped me out. Yeah. It was good. high school is hard enough as it is, so you have to have. A close group of girls and there's like, you know, you have to choose. Did you have, like, were they like jocks and like music nerds and not really. I feel Not really. Some of the most popular people in my school were like. Clowns. Like the class clowns. Class clowns are different though. Yeah, they can be popular. Yeah, I know, but they're like R the edge. No, they wasn't really they weren't like jocks or That just doesn't really exist in like British high school culture especially prefer, especially like British. Like public school culture. Yeah. It's just who is like the chast? Who is like the, like who is the one that's gonna be like the worst? You've seen skins. You've never seen skins. I've never seen skins. So who's gonna be like the most like belligerent, who's having the most parties, but like anyone can come. Oh, that's nice. Where were you? You were popular, weren't you? Yeah. Yeah. Did you bully anyone? No, I wouldn't bully anyone unless they tried to bully me. Ah. And then it would be like that, that one scene in Pose. Were you like the Oh what? What TV series? Sex education. Okay. Where there's the one gay guy who's friends with the two popular girls. Yeah. Was that you? Yes. No, not really. Okay. No. 'cause I feel like that's what I imagine you as no. Because like I wasn't friends with there was like a. If you were to say like the popular like girls, they weren't really. There wasn't really like one group of them. Because they were a little bit lame as well. Like thinking back about, thinking back on it. Well Back then. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. No one could dress and everyone was ugly. But then it would be the girls that would come to school with like their, like hair back nodded and like full face of makeup back nodded back. They're like back comb their hair. Oh, ew. That was like a full trend. I remember that. Yeah. The back combed hair and then so much makeup. Oh. But like they weren't really like cool. They just. They were chubby. They were just chubby. Okay. This is the thing, the popularity was like, who could win in the fight? Oh, that's fun. And maybe that was my school feral, actually. That was my school who could win in the fight. And if you could win in the fight, you probably the most popular. Is that just your school or is that a UK thing? Probably public school. I'm rough. It was the public school system there'd be like a text blast or like someone, there'd be a rumor be like, oh, there was a girl called Carly and she would get in so many fights. She was pretty popular. Oh my God. 'cause no one would wanna say anything to her because. Yeah, she'd beat you up. Ooh. And I wouldn't wanna get on bad. It feels very primal. Yeah. I wouldn't wanna get on a bad side, so I'm like, mean. Carly were tight. What was the text blast? If there was gonna be a fight, she'd beat the shit out. People after school you sent a their text blast about fights. Yes. Get with the program. We didn't have that. Yeah, well you were a loser. I probably didn't get the text blast. I was probably left out of this. No, people used to get into fights all the time and it would, and that would determine popularity and you would just stay on the side of the people who would win the fights. Friendship. Did you grow up in ancient Rome, French? Yes. Sparta. I only got the chain messages, if you don't send this to 10 people Oh yeah. Your aunt will die. Oh yeah. Oh, I get them on MySpace blood. Oh. Space does kill me. Love MySpace is friendship. We could talk about friendship. Yeah, we could talk about MySpace. And you like could prioritize your friend list on MySpace and then you'd be like, actually no, this person's my new best friends. I'm gonna put them on number one. Yeah, because you could like prioritize your friends on MySpace. How bitchy was that? That's crazy word. How fucking Cty was that feature on MySpace where you could be like. This person's my best friend, but then this person's my second and third, and everyone could see it fourth and fifth and sixth, best friend. And if you decided one week, you're like, actually, I'm really vibing with this person more. And you would move them around, move number six out. You'd pull so many fights. You'd have so many fights. You'd go to school on Monday morning, you're like, why'd you move me? On MySpace. I see that I'm number two now on your friends list. I'm not gonna lie, I don't even think I did that. I don't think I had enough friends to like fill those, fill those six. Oh, that's sad. I can't remember my space. Like I know I had MySpace so, but I can't remember conversations like this and I'm like, oh, I just wanna give you a hug. But I know me and high school would not be friends with you in high school. Oh no. You wouldn't be at all Fuck up. I remember my space, but I don't remember putting like friendship. I remember aim more so like I would aim A-I-M-A-I-M messenger. What A-I-M-A-A-O-L-A-O-L-A-O-L-A-O-L Messenger. Okay. Did you not have that? It was MSN. Oh, you had MSN? No, we had a OL. We are cool. Okay. You're were the uk It was different. Yeah. I don't know if you had a OL. We had a OL. I had like a L as my Internet. So you have a L messenger. No, I use MSN. Oh, I use a OM messenger. I don't know what a is. You would MSN When we were in high school and then all of a sudden I was in college and it was BM Oh, you was a BMI didn't BMBM in the shout people BM that shit bb m in the shout of people. I wish I had a BMI was so like crunchy at the time. It was so me and my black people bold. I'm like, okay, listen. So cool. When you were about to have an argument with someone, I broke up with a boyfriend once in at uni. Over BM Messenger. And I was like, I was visiting my friend in Sheffield and he was just being annoying as fuck. He told me he dropped out of uni. And I was like, you're a loser. You're a loser and I'm gonna dump you. And I was like, hold my drink. And I'm like, click cl clack away. I'm on BM on my Blackberry bowl. They were like raised, they were like raised kind of things, weren't they? Yeah. Raised letters, friendship. It was very like nice breaking up with someone over BBM. I had a razor. Oh, that's cool. No, I didn't. Oh, that's a lie. I wish I had a razor. Are you okay? No, because I only got the ones that's, you had such a sheltered upbringing. I did. I know that you have had a very sheltered upbringing, and whenever I talk about stories like you've seen sex education on Netflix, you've seen skins. My high school experience, like my college experience was very similar to like this. We would go to parties, we would get wasted really young. Friendship there weren't really that many like cult groups of friends like that stuck to themselves. People like bled into each other's groups of friends all the time and it was like a very fun, like school was social as fuck for me. That's why when I went to university, I was like, I don't give a fuck about why I study. I just wanna socialize that I did community. I was only invited to a singular party in high school. A singular one. Oh. And that's because one of the popular girls was in chorus and then she, I think she felt bad for me. Oh, that's cute. And she invited me. She was cute. She was nice. Aw, look at you now. I know. I'm so popular now. Um, What was I gonna say? I had something else. Say you've got, you've got a million followers on TikTok, so that's nice. Yeah. I also have a million friends. Yeah, and I'm way more com confident than I was in high school. Do you think it was a confidence? Yeah. No. This is an interview for you, cause you start talking about our childhood's a lot more than we were supposed to. Let's try, I generally do wanna talk about like adult friendships. 'cause I think that's just a bit more important. 'cause the fuck. Do you speak to my school still? No one? No, actually not a single person. I do. I don't see pt. Anyone. No. That's crazy. So high school for you, you were like a little bit of a nerd. Very. You still are. Yeah. You were sheltered Very. You didn't listen to music? Nope. Christian Pop. You listened to Christian Pop. Christian pop and Christian rock growing up, our God is an awesome God. He writes from heaven above with we them power and love. Our God is an awesome God. That triggered so many people from me seeing that mean in high school. I was listening. I was listening to Beyonce and Shakira. Nope. Oh I, I listened to like. green Day and like all American rejects. Yeah. Okay. I had a punk, like a nerd punk phase. Like I liked punk rock music. Yeah. Everyone kinda did, but I, everyone was not fitting that. But I had Pete Wind's hair. I. Yeah, I had people inside too. Yeah. It was so bad. Yeah. I went from like MTV's. No, just don't kill the drama. Let's start fight. Like I used to watch that religiously on MTV. Mm-hmm. And like they hear these like beautiful women jarring onscreen and I'm like, I'm definitely homosexual. Yes. Two. I had a weird like panic at the disco phase. Yeah. Is that Brendan Uri? Yeah. Who? What A loser. Yeah. Sorry, what was your question? For me? My question is, Matthew, thank you for asking me. You're welcome. Question to ask you. You're welcome. The question is. Do you feel like you missed out on like childhood or like school things? When you hear, especially I dunno when you hear about like other people's stories or like, 'cause I always wonder there are always the quieter kids, the shyer kids, the shy kids who would invited to like things or got to experience the things other people were experiencing. People would come home, come to school on a Monday and be like, oh my God, that party on Saturday night was so fun. What did you think in that moment? At the time I was probably sad. Oh. At the time I was definitely sad, if I didn't get to go places, but I had some friends, so I wasn't that sad. Okay. But then looking back on that, did you be friends? What did you, with your friends at school? Uh, We hung out in the Walmart parking lot. I'm sorry, what? We would hang out in the Walmart parking lot. I'm sorry, what? So there's also something in our little town, North Carolina called Cruising, which I did every so often, which was literally you would get in your car with your friends. Cruising is in gay cruising. No, no, no, no, No. You would get in the car and there was like one road, it was like the road through the middle of town. Hickory, Hickory, North Carolina. you would just drive back and forth really fast. Oh, that's fun. And then part of it was sitting in the Walmart parking lot. There was probably drinks involved, but I didn't drink until I was 18 so, so that was what I spent my time doing with my friends. Crazy. And then watching Glee. Okay that's enough of that. That's enough. You went to uni. This story continues that way. Pretty much. I don't feel like I missed out. Now in the moment probably, I was probably like, wow, I wish I was popular. But looking back, I was like, no, life isn't about popularity. Life's about fr like it's about friendship. It doesn't come about friendship. Did you enjoy the times you had with your friends? Yes. Because you see these, you know, there are movies about like loner kids. Yes. Tell me more about me. Who have one or two friends, but they're like great friendships. Yeah. No, and I think that's what's key. I did have great friendships at the time. They're not my friends now because I didn't keep up with them. Yeah. No, we like, and that's fine. We grow, but they were my friends at the time and yeah, they helped me through everything, so I don't feel like I missed out on anything. 'cause what did I miss? If I, If I was popular and I did go outta the parties, what was I getting? Everyone was straight. I was gay straight. but also I would live in North Carolina. Where was I going to party? Oh, that's true. Someone's house. The parking lot. AKA Y. I was cruising down the street. Not cruising, cruising, The park. The Walmart parking lot is a crazy, I grew up in Hicksville. Crazy place to be. There was nowhere to go. The closest place was Charlotte, which is 45 minutes away longer because we didn't have a highway then. So it was long. It was probably like an hour and a half to go to Charlotte. It like no one's going when they're 17 to Charlotte, in my mind, like you're Amish. That is wild. Goes by. Yeah. So great. Love that. Yeah. I feel like we just were in, in the trenches then for far longer than I anticipated. The trenches are good place to this, this podcast about the trenches. No, I know, I know. We're digging trenches. Yeah. Yeah. We are actually actively digging trenches. Where do you want to move into? I want to talk about though is adult friendships, big spooky adult friendships, big spooky adult friendships, dun, because first of all, unless you live in your hometown and you grow up and you're still friends with a bunch of people that you went to school with or college with, or you worked with your first few jobs or your. Friends. Friends or your like boyfriend's friends or your part Yeah. Your partner's friend groups and just became a whole clique. Who are your friends? Because I know my brother's friends are his friends from uni, his friends from school, his friends from work. Those are his friends. Okay. When I think about our friends. Like my friends are my friends from Berlin when I lived there. My friends from Australia when I lived there. Like it's just meeting people when you travel around. But when you move to a new city, you don't have any friends. So two years ago we moved here and we didn't know a single person. Mm-hmm. Worth knowing. Keep that in, that I don't, whoa, fuck shots fired. So we didn't know anyone worth noting. Yeah. So we basically didn't have any friends for months. Yeah. We had one friend when we moved here. One person that we knew from the internet. But then again, like this is how you make friends. Exactly. We're getting into how did we make these friends? We did the same thing in Toronto. We did the same thing in Berlin. Did you have friends in Berlin? Were there, I have so many friends in Berlin. When you moved there. No, but it was really, I feel like it was easier. That's what I was saying and I was like, early twenties. Moved to Berlin and I was like, I'm just gonna meet people. It was easy. I met my first like friend, my first best friend she became best friends with for like two years of living in Berlin within the first weekend of me living in Berlin. And then I was just integrated into her friend group immediately. Do you? And that was my friend group for two years. do you think it was easier because we've lived, so we've moved to Berlin, we've moved to Toronto, we moved to San Francisco basically without knowing anyone. Mm-hmm. Three cities at different points in our lives. Australia too. so that's like early twenties was Berlin. Mid twenties. Twenties was Toronto and then late twenties Totally. To now thirties. Yeah. Is San Francisco. So we moved to different cities. I doing one state one. Yeah. We moved to these different, three different cities at three different points in our life. So do you think it was easier to make friends in Berlin in your Yeah. Lower, lower twenties. Early twenties. Twenties than it was moving to San Francisco in your thirties? Yes, a hundred percent. Why? I am so glad you asked that question. Like I knew that you, I know it was on your mind, so I was partying more, like that was like the main, my main goal in my early twenties. Like I'm going out of, partying so much. And in my early twenties. And also I knew one person from Australia that I like knew at the hostel. I met up with again in Berlin, and then he introduced me to someone that he knew when he was traveling in Australia. And that became my friend, but because we were both from the uk. It was easy. And it was just easy to be like, oh, come to this party. Come to that party. I don't have any obligations. I like, I'm single. I am. I think that also is a key contributor. Being single and being like, I can do anything I want whenever I want. I'm gonna go out every single night. I'm gonna go whenever I want, whenever I wanna go somewhere, I'm just gonna do it. I've got no obligations. I've got no responsibilities. Responsibilities is the word I was looking for. I was gonna say, I dunno what I was gonna say. yeah, I was like, oh, this person's having a house party or a pregame for this thing or whatever. Do you wanna come to our house and just smoke some weed? Say that it's legal. Yeah. Oh yeah. We live in California. That's true. And then I'd be like, yeah, absolutely. And then you just like bond. Bond over. Mm. Weed. Yeah, weed marijuana. And I just think that's just, I think also in Berlin it was easier because it's it's, there are German people living there, obviously, but it's a very expat, heavy city, expat, whatever that word is. so you seek each other out? Yeah. Like people from the uk it's a lot of. British and Australians living in Berlin. Yeah. So you will seek other people out. 'cause everyone else is seeking everyone out too. Totally. Because Germans are not, if I'm like at a random party or even like at the workplace, like I'm still friends with like most of the people I used to work with. You also worked because I did work and that's another key contributor. Yeah. Moving to a new city and having a job. Where you actually go into the job. Place the job, place. Fuck me. Been outta the job for a while into the job. Yeah, I know exactly. But because we're self-employed, we moving, we moved to San Francisco. It was so difficult. 'cause when we moved to Toronto. Actually, here's a very interesting point. You moved to Berlin and you were self-employed. Yeah. You moved to Toronto and you were self-employed. Yep. You moved to San Francisco and we're both self-employed. Yep. I moved to Berlin and I got a job. Yeah. Most of the girls I'm friends, still friends with are still are friends from the office. Yeah. I moved to Toronto and I worked at a hotel. I guess like a lot of those people. Were my core friend group until I made friends with other people. Mm-hmm. Because I still speak to some of those people I used to work with. But then I guess they like, they bleed out into a wider friend group. And then here was the most difficult place I've ever found making friends because I moved here, self-employed. Huh? Yes. So now I, oh, now you understand my trauma. Now I understand you a little bit. Oh my God. Also I think it's easier for you 'cause you're more of an extrovert than I am. Like I'm very introverted. Yeah. And it's very like, I like spending my time on my own. So I would, I find myself, if I'm, if I have a choice between going out and staying in, lean towards staying in. So when I was in Berlin and when I was in Toronto. Especially, I was self-employed and you were working, so I was like, it was harder for me to find groups of friends that I wanna be friends with. Yeah. I would meld into your friendship groups a little bit, especially in Berlin. More so in Berlin than Toronto. 'cause I did find like some community in Toronto through Barry's. Oh. Through working out, which I, looking back on it, not the best, not the Barry's Co, like the Fit fan, but I did find some sort of community and friendship there, which. It's saying a little bit of something for Barry's. Yeah. But also I feel like you were quite good at finding friends through social media. Yeah. Yeah. That's been like your biggest thing. Because when we moved to, were they good friends? No, when we moved to Bur, when I moved to Berlin, I had like my friends through just like socializing I found a lot, a couple of friends through social media and Berlin too. But then again, but the friends that you had in Berlin were both through Instagram? Yeah. Yeah, because I was just like working by myself, and it's like, where do you go? They were all awful, by the way. I know all of you're like I know, I know, I know. To run friends from Berlin were losers. So was I. And had the personality of a, like an eggshell. So did I probably at that point. No, you were interesting. They were, you were interesting. A speckled egg. Yeah, like an ostrich egg. An ostrich egg. There's so much to it, but like moving to San Francisco was. Probably the hardest because A, we were together. So when you're single, it's easier to make friends. When you're together with someone, it's harder to make friends just because you have to do everything together and it's, whatever. You don't have to, but it's more comfortable when you move to a new city to do things together. And not have your separate things, which we hadn't had. Until like probably last year. But then if we were like also socializing, we'd be like, oh, we're both coming. 'cause this, right? Because why not? This is now our social interaction of the month. And then B, we were self, both self-employed, so we didn't go to a workplace. We'd make videos together. We don't really have coworkers. We have a couple, one influencer friend in the city who's great. Yeah. But other than that, like San Francisco is also not an influencer city. Like maybe in LA or New York. We might go to more events. No, that was the main reason we wanted to move to San Francisco because Exactly. It wasn't an influencer city. Oh, we can talk about influencer friends. They're fucking annoying. I don't want influencer friends talk about Toronto. I don't talk about Toronto. Well, well Your first, like your first friend group. Like, when I first started working at that hotel in Toronto. Yeah. I was making friends left right, and center. 'cause you know it's a hotel. Yeah. Everyone's young and hot. Yeah. And artistic. And I'm like, I fit right in. Amazing. But then you, oh, I'm also, I'm at work for. 8, 9, 10 hours a day. I'm like, what are you doing? What are you doing? I went to a coffee shop and sat down and tried well, I was a freelance writer at the time, a copywriter. I was a copywriter and an influencer, so I was doing like copywriting and I don't know, fucking planning my Instagram posts. You used to go to a cafe? Cafe. I'm like. Work. I would pretend to work so I felt productive. You would work nine to five just so you could feel like you had a job, a purpose, a job job, yeah, like a purpose, which I'm like. Okay. Realistically, our career path and like luckily our like social media success has allowed us to be able to create our own schedules. Yeah. And unless I have sponsored content or branded partnerships to focus on, I'm gonna do my podcast or I'm gonna do my like Instagram stuff, I'm gonna do TikTok stuff together and that's like fun. And we get to make that at our own. Pace and Yeah, schedule. Schedule. You used to go into a cafe? To what? To socialize, make friends? No. Did you make friends? At the fuck? No. Do you think I talked to anyone? No. I think I just wanted like a sense of normalcy or a sense of like community where I could try to find it, which was just like a cafe where I would part like work so I did make influencer friends through our agency that we were represented by in Toronto. You knew some of the people though before you moved. I did know some of the people before we moved through Instagram. I don't, they're not listening. Talk shit. I'm not, they're not listening. They're specifically shit about them. I will, I don't give a fuck. I did. I think most, some of lame ass fucking people. I think most people in, most of the influencers in Toronto are not most, we have a, we, I, we have one influencer friend in Toronto who I adore. Luna Lindsay, love you. I'll call her out. She's the best. Because she's a real person. Yeah. On and offline. Totally. Like she is the same online as she is offline. Yeah. Yeah. Most influencers. This is why I'm not friends with a lot of influencers are wonderful. Influencer friend in the city in San Francisco is the same online as she is offline. Yeah. A little more un unhinged offline, and I love it. You one could say that we're more unhinged in real life than we are in I know. On social media. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But which is a good thing. Like you, you should be more unhinged in real life. A hundred percent because you're like. You've got like a stick up your ass which is the case for most of these influencers. When I first got immersed into influencer culture in Toronto, I'm working at a hotel, but I, in the evenings I'm going to like random events with you and Toronto is a very like influencer. It's a big influencer hub and there's just events all the time. So that was a good way to go out and socialize and meet people. No one would give me the time of day Yeah. Until I started like building my Instagram or like my Instagram started. Yeah. Coming up and then we started getting big on TikTok. All of a sudden, I'm getting these dms from people I've known now for a year in Toronto who all of a sudden want to get to know me are giving me the time of day. Mm-hmm. Oh, you're fake as fuck. And also when I'm meeting these people I can see them online and I'm like, oh, you seem so fun online. Or I'm meeting these people that I may have seen or followed on Instagram for a while and I'm like, oh, you're awful in person or boring and that and or so fucking boring. Yeah. You have the personality. Oh my god. Oh my fucking God. Don't even degrade Eggs. Shows like that. Even they're worse. Some eggs shows couldn't even find their personality out of a fucking cereal box. That is so crazy. Like you couldn't even find the personality out of the prize of a cereal box. Yeah. The worst. That is crazy. And this is why they're not my friends, And then it made me like really question like the, like in that industry as a whole. But I feel like maybe like the switch in social media to being less Instagram focused and curated. Yeah. To then being like TikTok and you have to have a bit of a personality to succeed in this. Yeah. And then we saw a huge rise in people who actually are a bit more interesting. Yeah. I remember we talked about this like in the pandemic, we were like, oh my God, these are people like who are actually fun. And we started going into like TikTok events or people were like doing per personality based stuff rather than just here's a photo of a coffee cup on this floor in this cafe. 'cause it has nice tiles. Shut up. No. You know who exactly I'm talking about. I know who you're talking about because the lay ass bitch ass bitches. Also, I think a Toronto is a city where the first question people ask you is what do you do? Yeah. What do you do? San Francisco, I feel like is not that city. I don't think I even know what half my friends do. I'm still confused about what most of our good friends do for work. Not confused. I just never asked. The thing is I don't wanna know, nor do I care. I don't wanna know. And to give your industry, tell me what's been on going on day to day. Give me the tea. Gimme the office tea. Yeah. Tell me. Yeah. But we don't care. I don't care. No one cares. No one cares about jobs. No one really asks about like our jobs and I don't really particularly care about talking about it. Yeah. But Toronto very much was up. It's in my opinion I don't know if sometimes people's jobs are like the most interesting thing about them. And for the case of many people in Toronto that we knew their, like influencer careers were their most interesting things about them. I just don't know if that's the most interesting thing about, it's one of them. It's one interesting thing about About us. About us. Yeah. Yeah. We've got so many interesting things. It's just my day job. Yeah. It's just my day job. It's how I make money. I'm just sat here talking into a microphone and you're listening. I do. As my friend. Thank you, friend. Oh, they're our friends. I was gonna get into it. I was gonna get into it. What? Our online friends, they're being our friends. Yeah. Them. Them being our friends. I think one of the most, on topic, not on topic. On point. No, on the tip of your tongue. I think one of the things that's like currently been going on in my brain recently, on the top of your head, on the top of my tongue. Tip of my toenail has been friends. What? That I've met recently? Yes. Okay. So in the last two and a half years since we've lived in San Francisco, which is crazy, two and a half, almost two and a half years wild we didn't know anybody. And San Francisco is the first city that I think, either of us I've ever lived in where it's So gay. Like this gay male. Gay male, yes. It's very gay male. Oriented. That's like the demographic is just like lots of gay men. Yes, white. And I've never had a group of gay male friends before Toronto. We had like, we knew a bunch of gay people. Berlin is such a queer city, but I never had a group of just like gay friends. Me, neither ever. And I feel like it's just like a thing. People are just like, have them. And that on social media all the time. They're just like, people just like move in packs of men. White ones. White ones at that. And I just found, I found it really difficult to figure out where I fit into that demographic or that or that like life. And so lifestyle. Yeah. Maybe the lifestyle because it, homosexual lifestyle because at the time, I really enjoyed it last year when I was like going out so much. It's it's a really social thing and I think all of a sudden I'm like, ah, I'm partying. I'm like going out again and like I'm having this resurgence of like nightlife culture. Because that's what friendship, that's how I think I justified making friends and I'm like, oh, I'm making so many great friends. It's 5:00 AM at some random person's house. What the fuck am I doing with these random people? At 5:00 AM. Those friendships did not last, or no, they did not withstand shocker the test of time. But I think it's interesting that like we moved here and I like, it made me like a little bit insecure. It made me a little bit like, ooh, I dunno where I belong. I dunno where I fit into this culture. And I just feel like it, I think it's in my mind, I think it's a very San Francisco based thing. And I don't know if it would've been different if we had moved to New York, for example, where it was a bit more diverse. And a little bit more like. I don't know. I just love women so much and this has been the first place I've lived where like I have two really close girlfriends. And then the rest are all men. Crazy. That's crazy to me. I will say it's not like you can't make really good friends in San Francisco 'cause two of our. Like best friends we met here and that's how we met our two good girlfriends. Yeah. And I'm like, you can, it's, it is just rarer. I think because the city is smaller, a smaller city. It is a small city. compared to New York, like it's like there's, its densely populated size. It's densely populated, but still small. Two. Everyone's been priced out. So because it's really expensive. So all of the, like the artists and the queer people and like the people who can't afford to live here have been priced out. So the cool people, the cool people are living in Oakland or Berkeley or they moved somewhere else. Yeah. Those two points I think mean that it's harder to make friends who aren't white working in tech men, literally. It's just I feel like this city is like very copy paste of so it was, I found it difficult to make friends 'cause I'm like. Some of you people are really not interesting at all. Love some of them. Some of them have become friends. Some have become our closest. It is rarer. It's rarer. I think in New York or la? Not even. Not la. I'm not gonna say la. New York or Chicago. Oh, Chicago. No, I don't know about Chicago. I don't know. Oh, Chicago is also very white. Gay. Yeah. Chicago is very white. Gay. But also they're like finance bros. Yeah, that's true. New York, I just miss having like a diverse, I mean, I I do have a diverse friend group based off of like my current friends now, but last year when I was just like out in Yeah, the droves of gay men, it wasn't very diverse. I was like one of the darkest people in the room. It's like you were like all the spaces you were going into and putting yourself into Yeah. Were those spaces filled with those people? Because I felt I was like, how am I supposed to make friends if I'm not going out? Yeah. It is. How am I supposed to make friends? Because that's what I used to do when I was in my early twenties. But now my, I'm in my early thirties. But now it's a decade later. I think it's more important now to tone down, siphon away. have a couple of friendship girls, not 50 friendship girls. Yeah. The older, I just think, yeah, the older you get, obviously it's natural for you to lose friends and just like your core group gets smaller and smaller, which I love, but that feels, and I wish that people weren't like moving around all the time because if we stayed in Toronto, we had such a core group of friends. You are listening. I know you are and I fucking love you. And our best friend's husband? No, who's also our best friend. I'm keeping that one in there. I quick plug to our friend group in Toronto. I think I was so sad about leaving them because we just we formed such a close bond with these people and we had to leave the country, but we also did wanna leave Toronto anyway. Like it was just like, yeah, the place was just like, not for us. Yeah. We left behind such a fucking beautiful group of people and I was like scared that we were gonna lose them. But I think if you like try hard enough, you can make any friendship work. We speak to these people like almost every day. All the time. Yeah. All the time. Any random reference comes up, anything that pops up, like we're speaking all the time. Yeah. And then we met how seen each other in now almost a year and a half. Yeah. Since the last wedding. I think that's when you can tell that the friendship is going to stand the test. Totally. But then our, like two closest friends that we met here, our first core group in San Francisco, two of them left and moved to New York within six months. Yeah. Which was like a big blow. Fuck you, Fuck you cunts. But then we still speak to them every single day. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. you know when those friendships are gonna be the ones that you're gonna keep on. Yeah. And you know which ones you're gonna let go of. But I think it's when you, like day to day are like you're living in the city and you, maybe your closest friends aren't with you. 'cause then my best friend who lives in Berlin, still my like closest friends who lives in the, who live in the uk. I wish they could just all live together on an island that would be fun on a little island, friendship island, but then they don't know each other. Friendship Island. Friendship Island. That's a good title. Hi guys. Welcome to Friendship Island. Friendship Island. Welcome to Friendship Island. That's a good title. It is. Welcome to My Island. Oh yeah. Palm Trees, Carolyn Che. Yeah, exactly. Well, I was thinking of the Charlie Xcx version, but the Charlie XX remix, Charlie Xcx version of Welcome to My Island. Yes. I'll show it to you later. The Caroline Hick song? Yeah. They did a collab on it. Oh, we did not know. You'll hate it. What was I gonna say? Oh, what was I gonna say? I was gonna say, oh, friendship. Oh, friendship. Friendship. Making friends. Because you like, you think going to parties, you're gonna make the best friends of your life. And some of them Sure are. Pretty good friends I think make going to things based on your like interests, hobbies. Hobbies. Well, Some of these girls don't have any hobbies who. The fucking people that we know. Everyone that we met last year at the park, in the party scene, no hobbies. Not a single hobby in sight. Yeah. I think apart from maybe pickleball. Yeah. Oh, pickleball. But most of them aren't even playing pickleball. I know they're going to the gym. They're doing steroids and then they're going to the club and then they're doing Ketamine. The Castro. Yeah. Literally, I think going, but I think generally as a 30-year-old who's, I'm a 30-year-old now. Crazy. You've been 30. I know. It's crazy. I'm almost 31. 31. I know that's crazy for you. Almost 33. Yeah, don't age me like that. I think at this point in our lives, it's more if we want to make friends, the better friends are going to be made going to things, doing things that you enjoy or like trying new things. Clay. Clay, you keep saying clay. Clay is the. it's doing a ceramics class. It's a product. It's like a thing. Clay is the thing. You doing a ceramics class, you keep saying I wanna go do clay. Yeah, I like it. What do you mean I wanna go do brick? Like What do you mean? It's the do talk about the activity, not the product you're gonna use whilst you do the thing. I just like how it sounds. I'm on du plays like so strange. What do play, I know I got you a class. For fucking Christmas. Where? When are you gonna use it? When are you gonna take me? When are you gonna go? You're supposed to take me, I don't know where it is. You bought the class. So annoying. I think doing things like that like ceramics and, I don't know, just like hobbies that you might be interested at a book club or like farmer's market. I don't fucking know. An instrument. Farmer's markets. Yeah, you can. I make friends, the farmer's market. I'm not making friends with the farmer's market. You could, you've been to the farmer's market if you tried to I'm not making friends with the farmer's market. You could 'cause first of all, it's either on a Saturday or a Sunday and I'm gonna be hungover, I'm irritable when I'm hung over. I'm irritable at the best of times. Irritable all the time. I'm irritable at the best, exactly the best of times, so I'm not gonna go to a farmer's market to seek out friendship with what the fucking carrot manufacturer. That'd be pretty fun for you maybe. The carrot man. Sure. The carrot manufacturer. Man. I don't know the guy who makes carrots fucking out. You mean the farmer? Yeah, the farmer. The farmer's market. Oh yeah. Duh. Not the manufacturer of the fucking farmer's market. You're insane. I was trying to think of the name for the people who like are the farmer's? Market farmers? Turns out the farmers market. Yeah. The market of farmers. Turns out it's just the market for farmers. You're insane. say. How do you feel about your friends, your, like social as your social life right now? Maybe not so much your social life, but like how you feel about the fact that you have formed friends over the last like couple years specifically because it relates to how you feel like right now in your friend groups. I feel better about my friends now than I did last year. I'm, as I said, an introvert, so it's harder for me to make friends or it takes me a little bit longer to want to be friends with someone. Let's say that much. Okay. I need, it takes me a while to break through for someone to break through to me. 'cause I'm like, I need to know if you're actually a good person or not, or if you're just like. Someone who's fickle or someone who doesn't like, who I don't wanna be friends with. So last year I was trying to make friends with everyone. I was like, let me be friends with every single person that I meet. That's not me. and I think you see me doing it. Sure. Yeah. And you're like, oh, I feel like I should also do that. Or like if I'm making plans. Totally. You're like, I kind of wanna stay in, but I feel like I have to go. 'cause like no a, I love staying in. So I love saying, and I love being by myself. Live for that. A cozy night in so good. I don't wanna go out all the time. I'm tired. You have your book friends and your internet friends. I do have my internet. Friends. Friends. I also have my real friends. I like having, you're like, you make me seem like a fucking loser. I have friends, a lot of them actually. Good. I know. I'm siphoning away. Siphoning, is there a better word than that? I'm like cutting away the fat. Also worse, I don't know. Taking away the people that just aren't actual friends that will be friends for life. Cut off the fat. That was brutal. That was brutal. I made a lot of acquaintances last year. Yeah. And they will. Oh, I have so many acquaintances. Stay acquaintances. I have so many acquaintances, but I want my core group of girls who I can rely on. Yeah, the people I can rely on. The people I could text if I was having a bad day or if I need advice on something. That took a while. That takes a while. Yeah. It does take a while. And it took two and a half years. Yeah. Where I feel comfortable now. I think that's a good bench. Benchmark. Bench park. Yeah. Bench park. Benchmark. Benchmark. Sometimes I'm like, do we know English? No, I don't at all. Also, we film this when we're like, it's the afternoon. I've worked out. I've heard we've in meetings today. Oh my God, my brain's scattered. I. Oh my God. What a hard you. What a hard life. You worked out and you had one meeting. Yeah. And then I had to make myself And you're oof. What a big day. Yeah. My head hurts. I need a nap. I do need a nap. I'm like watching the dog take the deepest nap ever. And I'm like, I wish I could do that. Someone's gotta pay for her food. That's a good benchmark for I think finding. Your core friend group, the amount of time it takes. Yeah. I think two years or to feel like settled in a new city. No. Two years is generally the time where you would decide whether you want to leave a city or stay in a, we only stayed in Toronto for four years because we got stuck there for two years. For Covid? Yeah, we were gonna move up to the first year. No, it was after the first year. We both. Told each other, we didn't wanna live there anymore. Yes. So we would've been gone from Toronto by the two year mark. Probably. We left Berlin before the two year mark. Pretty much. Mine was You were at the two year mark? Mine was over two years. Mine was before the two year mark. San Francisco. I don't feel a an urgency to leave yet. No, I think we're chilling. I like to chill. Yeah. I will. Like eventually, I think the slow paced nature of this city. And maybe my high paced nature of wanting to socialize. Yeah. They don't really click. And so I think I, maybe two years ago if I hadn't moved to like New York for example I would've probably probably enjoyed that a little bit more. Yeah. In terms of like socializing and like making friends aspect. But I'm like, actually, let me sit my ass down a little bit. Let's like chill. Chill and not, and. There is no reason to go do something every single night with a different person. Because the select few people that I do have in my life are diamonds in the rough. That's nice. Also, you don't have enough, like we are only one person that has, I'm two people, wait. Hmm. We are two people and I'm also two people. You are insane. We only have enough energy to spread amongst social. We are sims characters and our social meter is only goes up to a certain level. Mine's a bit higher than your sim. Yeah. Yours is a bit higher fully, but at the still, you only have a certain amount of energy to give people. Yeah. So if you're giving energy to 50 people a week Yes. You're like, I wanna see all these people. Crazy. No, it's so crazy that. What did I just hear on TikTok? We were only supposed to know like our puny little minds from hunter gatherer days. Oh. This was the series that I wanted to do back in the day. What This segment Matt wants to do a segment. Segment. I'm introducing a new segment. Okay it's a good thing. This is close to the end of the episode because Matt's introducing a new segment, which we discussed and completely cut off what I was gonna say, but I'm gonna come back to it in a second. Please talk about your segment. It's called, I read an article. Quote, unquote. And it means what did we learn on TikTok that we pretend to say that we read an article about, do you have one? You better. You better come up with one. I did. You made a whole fucking dance about it. Didn't you? Made a whole song dance about it, but I just had the idea of the segment and I wanna just start it. You, you say yours and I'll think about mine if I learned anything to this week, because we're at the dinner table. We talk about the news that we've been reading. Yeah. So what did you read an article about? I read an article. That basically we as human beings evolved to only know 150 people. 'cause again, back in the hunter gatherer days, back in the olden days hunter gatherer days when we were like living in the fucking cave. Mm-hmm. We only knew 150 odd people. We didn't have social media, we didn't have planes. We couldn't go around and like fuck about and meet a fuck ton people. Yeah. We lived in our communities and we stayed in our little. Click. Yeah. And that was like a hundred, 150 people. Our brains are not hardwired to know thousands of people. Why am I at the club with a thousand people? Online and offline? Online and offline? Online and offline. I'm not meant to be seeing about a thousand people scrolling through TikTok. I scroll on TikTok and I'm like, I've seen at least today, at least maybe 200 people. Yeah. And learned about their lives, and learned about their lives. Learned about a story, I don't know, just like something That's crazy. Yeah. I think that's wild. I'm going to the gym. I'm seeing like a hundred people there. Yeah. I'm scrolling through my phone. There's another a hundred people. Yeah. I'm walking down the street. There's another a hundred people. That's too much. That's a lot of people. It's too much. Our brains can't handle it. So basically what I'm trying to get at is. Let's go back into the caves, please. Simpler times, paint on some walls. You'll be listening to the next week's episode of Let's Dig In Through Hieroglyphics on a Stone Tablet. Exactly. So do you learn anything this week? I, so this week, I can't remember if I had learned it this week. It doesn't have to be this week. You can just it's a thing that I learned that's probably been the most, the thing that I've implemented into my life the most, because I do it every day. I used to, and everyone thinks that you brush your teeth, you floss, and then you mouthwash. You used to mouthwash first. No, you're supposed to false. You floss first. Okay. Then you mouthwash if you're gonna mouthwash. 'cause mouthwash industry is a little bit of a scam. You don't really need to mouthwash, but I do because it's fun. So you floss, you get all the gun gunk out. Then you mouthwash, you swirl it out and spit it out. You get most of the gunk out. Then you toothbrush, toothpaste. You brush your teeth fucking out because see, you do say this. You talk about an activity with the thing that you use. Yes. To do the activity. Shut up. Then you toothbrush, then you toothpaste, and you do clay. So then you brush your fucking teeth. Then you brush your fucking teeth because the toothpaste is moisturizer. Ah. So the toothpaste is the moisturizer of your teeth. Oh, wow. So you're not supposed, you're supposed to keep that on your teeth overnight and throughout the day. Oh. 'cause I don't like the feeling and taste of that though. You're supposed to leave it. I know. You're supposed to leave it because it's like continuing to make your teeth good. Yeah. 'cause I will have rinse that shit off. And that's changed my, that article has changed my life. Wow. TikTok, thank you for TikTok. I love that segment. We're keeping that segment. What if TikTok gets banned on what? On Saturday? It won't. Okay, great. Don't put that in the universe. You're right. Delete. Thank you so much. Friends. Our online community that we have built with the. Hard work and dedication to just constantly talk shit online. Mm. And you decided to stick around and listen to it, so that means you're the best of friends actually. So true. Yeah. You stuck with us for 14 episodes so far. Also, there are people that have been like following us for, oh, five years plus years. 7, 8, 7. I've been doing this for a while. Yeah. Yeah. You probably have followers from like Berlin 2016. 2016. That's crazy. Yeah. That's 4, 5, 9. That's nine. That's even nine. If you've been here since then. Wow. Go away. No, don't go away. I was a loyal followers. They were looking to your longest. Longest. I'm kidding. Your long, your longest term friends. Yeah. I love the internet. No, it was, I feel like that would've been like your first community building the internet. The internet. Yeah. Were you ever like making random friends on the internet? Not really. I did Omegle sometimes. Oh, that's fucking weird. You didn't do Omegle, did you? No. Fuck. No. It's so fun. No, we should do it sometimes. Absolutely not. No, I feel like maybe it was a younger generation thing, like my little brother's age, like making actual friends online. Because, yeah, I didn't do that. You wouldn't watch people play like video games and stuff? My little brother made friends. Like through games and gaming online? No. I was a real, I was, I didn't I was like, like on the edge of that. I was a real watch. I was a real person. I was a real nerd. I wasn't real life nerd. I wasn't an online nerd. I was a real life nerd. Awful lot nerd. Okay, if you enjoyed this podcast, please give us a review on Apple Podcasts. And subscribe wherever you want and follow us. What about Spotify podcast? You can also leave a review on Spotify if you want to. Apple's better, but do on both. Wherever you listen. Also, follow us everywhere. Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok. If it's still here after Saturday, it will be YouTube, Instagram. Did I say Instagram? Yeah. Follow us everywhere and we'll see you next time. On. Let's dig in. Bye friends. Bye friends. Love you. Oh um, Amigos. Oh pal. Oh no. My friend was a friend in French. Perfect. Great.